IREN jumps 13% as Dell Blackwell deal supercharges AI push

Shares of IREN Limited rose 13% on Wednesday after the company announced a $1.6 billion purchase agreement with Dell Technologies for Nvidia-powered Blackwell systems aimed at expanding its artificial intelligence infrastructure capacity.

The agreement involves air-cooled Blackwell systems supplied through Dell and is designed to support IREN’s previously announced five-year, $3.4 billion managed AI cloud services contract.

The systems are expected to be deployed across IREN’s existing data centers in Childress, Texas, with commissioning targeted for early 2027.

Once operational, the cloud AI contract is projected to increase IREN’s annualized run-rate revenue to $4.4 billion from $3.7 billion, reflecting the company’s continued expansion into AI infrastructure and cloud computing services.

The purchase price includes GPUs, servers, storage, networking equipment, ancillary hardware, integration services, and warranties, with payments scheduled following delivery.

AI infrastructure demand drives expansion

The latest deal underscores accelerating demand for AI compute infrastructure as hyperscalers, enterprises, and developers compete to secure capacity for increasingly complex AI workloads.

“Securing capacity and accelerating commissioning are our top priorities in a market where time-to-compute is everything,” said IREN co-founder Daniel Roberts. “Our relationship with Dell ensures access to hardware at the scale and speed the market demands.”

The Blackwell systems will support Nvidia-related cloud AI workloads under IREN’s broader infrastructure agreements.

Earlier this month, Nvidia said it would invest up to $2.1 billion in IREN as part of a broader agreement tied to deploying as much as 5 gigawatts of infrastructure.

IREN also previously announced a five-year AI infrastructure cloud services agreement involving Nvidia workloads and cluster management software developed alongside Mirantis.

The agreement will be supported by Blackwell platform systems deployed across roughly 60 megawatts of IREN’s existing data center capacity in Childress, Texas.

In November, Microsoft also signed a $9.7 billion agreement with IREN that includes access to Nvidia’s advanced AI chips.

From Bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure

IREN has emerged as one of the strongest-performing AI infrastructure-related stocks over the past year after repositioning itself from a Bitcoin mining operator into an AI-focused data center company.

The transition leveraged infrastructure already developed for cryptocurrency mining, including large-scale power access and data center facilities capable of supporting energy-intensive computing operations.

Bitcoin mining and AI cloud computing both require substantial electricity consumption and high-density server infrastructure, allowing IREN to adapt existing operations to meet growing AI demand.

Investor enthusiasm around AI infrastructure companies accelerated further after Nvidia executives recently highlighted rising cloud GPU pricing.

Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said rental prices for Nvidia H100 GPUs have risen about 20% year-to-date, while A100 cloud GPU pricing has climbed nearly 15%.

Those comments boosted sentiment across the broader “neocloud” and AI infrastructure sector, with investors increasingly focusing on companies capable of rapidly deploying GPU capacity.

The latest Dell agreement further strengthens IREN’s positioning within the fast-growing AI infrastructure market as demand for cloud computing capacity continues expanding globally.